MerricB said:
**looks on in interest, knowing how Gary feels about 3E rules...** 
Too many of them, too much quantification, and where has the magic gone? Anyway, I believe you'll find the response I gave a sincere and appropos one
Gary - thank you muchly for your answer about the cavaliers, barbarians, and acrobats. Or, the ABCs if you prefer.
You played a barbarian just to annoy your group's magic-users? Right - time to start a new character. I don't think Meliander the Mage would enjoy such a companion. You weren't pilfering the items already possessed by the magic-users, were you?
But of course!
Merric, we played a LOT. An average of seven gaming sessions a week was typical even when I was busy working. Often I played more than that. Rob would DM for me one-on-one where I mostly roleplayed because i was doing manual work at the same time. So, understanding that, the number of PCs I created and played should be likewise understandable. Playing seriously and intensely a good deal of the time, I varied that by playing otherwise--such as with my half-orc cleric-assassin
When I played a barbarian, I would indeed atempt to get at newly discovered magic items and rid the world of their bane, and if some mage was foolish enough to flaunt such an object before the character, and he could lay hands on it, then... Because the barbarian was otherwise cooperative and put the overall interest of the party first, he survived quite a number of adventures, and his demise was not at the hands of a fellow PC. Some monster got him--which I don't recall, but it seems to me it was a basilisk. No cleric or mage in the group was much interested in having the poor chap returned to life
I was wondering (again!) about something in those oAD&D rules. You've got a rather complex system written for initiative - with modifiers for weapon speeds, weapon lengths when charging, casting times, magic device activation times, bow fire initiatives modified by dexterity...
Did you actually use all of that, or was it - as seems standard for you - much more a DM's call as to when things occurred, modified by what seemed appropriate?
Many thanks once more!
Cheers!
Actually, most of the DMs I played with were like me. We used only initiative and casting times for determination of who went first in a round. The rest was generally ignored save in the most critical situations when rules lawyering might enable saving a PC. I did use weapon length for the NPCs as a factor when I DMed so as to manage to get in some first attacks on PCs, and players who had good Dex could factor that into their initiative when using bows, sure. If they didn't, okay
In all, we played to have fun, and in the throes of a hot melee rules were mostly forgotten except as a feature of the combatant's nature, if you will. If it seemed logical then none of the veterans would look for a rule to the contrary.
Cheerio,
Gary
